In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

21 From Chocolate Pots to Maya Gold Belizean Cacao Farmers Through the Ages Patricia A. McAnany and Satoru Murata Belizean chocolate—the moniker does not carry the same cachet as Swiss or Belgian chocolate, does it? Although the heavily marketed European brands have gained global prestige and name recognition, the nations of reference are far away from the tropical climes in which cacao is grown today and was grown in the past. Contemporary name-tagging of chocolate is linked to processing techniques and packaging locales rather than to centers of cultivation—one of the many injustices of a temperate-focused, global economy. Nevertheless, Belizean chocolate, sold under the sobriquet of Maya Gold, is enjoying modest recognition today under a fair trade agreement negotiated between a British candy company and Maya cacao-growers of southern Belize. This resurgence of chocolate production in the Belize zone of the Maya lowlands follows a period of lower-level production during the preceding two hundred years. Contemporary production levels recapitulate the established position that the Belize zone once held as a cacao producer, notwithstanding key distinctions introduced by the structure of global capitalism. In this chapter, evidence of the former prominence of Belizean cacao is adduced from historical accounts, relict stands of Theobroma cacao L. trees, and archaeobotanical, chemical, and archaeological remains. In one of the great circularities of history, a crop that once provided pre-Columbian and Colonial Mesoamerica with its most universally acknowledged standard of value and closest approximation to a medium of currency, now fills a cash crop niche among subsistence farmers of southern Belize. The central theme of this study is the deep history of cacao cultivation in the Belize zone, which is demonstrated by the continuity of cacao farming from Middle Preclassic to contemporary times (800 B.C. to present). A Caribbean watershed landscape that is conducive to chocolate farming, the Belize zone Patricia A. McAnany and Satoru Murata 430 provides the frame for this longitudinal perspective on cultivation and consumption of a premier cultigen of Mesoamerica. This chapter is divided into three sections. First we turn to the contemporary situation in which cacao is produced for a world market. This commodity-based cultivation is shown to differ significantly from ethnographically documented, lower levels of production for ritual practice and localized exchange. These arrangements characterize the last two centuries. In the Caribbean valleys that today comprise Belize, precious little is known about cacao production during the late seventeenth, the eighteenth, and the early part of the nineteenth centuries. Demographic collapse, insect blights, poor maintenance of orchards, and competition from South American producers conspired to depress drastically cacao production throughout Mesoamerica during the late Colonial period (Feldman 1985:87; M. J. MacLeod 1973:239–240). For the sixteenth and first half of the seventeenth century, however, Colonial documents indicate that cacao production thrived throughout Belize; these accounts are summarized in the following section on the ethnohistory of Belizean cacao. The deeper history of cacao cultivation during pre-Columbian times is interpreted from remains of cacao beans, charred wood, chemical traces, artifacts, and relict stands of cacao orchards. Macrobotanical remains, likely of burned cacao wood, that date to the Middle Preclassic period (800–400 B.C.) suggest that some of the earliest farmers of Belize cultivated cacao along with maize and other key subsistence items. How Maya Gold entered the World Market Traditional cultivation of cacao among southern Belize Maya farmers Only in recent decades has Belizean cacao become a player in the global market and hence acquired a considerable boost in importance among its producers ; nevertheless, cacao seems always to have retained its ritual and economic significance among Maya cultures of the Belize zone. Some of the best ethnographic accounts of the traditional cultivation of cacao are provided by J. Eric S. Thompson, who, in the 1920s conducted multiple studies in the Toledo district of southern Belize (Figure 21.1). Cacao played vital roles in rituals concerning marriage, birth, and baptism; that is, in significant rites of passage (J. E. S. Thompson 1956:104). For example, a soon-to-be-groom of the Mopan Maya village of San Antonio in the Toledo district, upon acceptance of his proposal by the bride’s parents, would pay all the costs of a feast held to celebrate the betrothal, which included “a hog, a gallon of rum, tortillas, and cocoa” (J. E. S. Thompson 1930:80). Cacao was symbolically intertwined with the most important subsistence crop in Mesoamerica—maize (J. E. S. Thompson 1956...

Share